Black moon phase tattoo of a row of circles shading from crescent to full on the upper arm of a woman in a coral vest top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon phases on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A row of six black circles shows the phases of the moon, from a thin crescent on the left to a solid full disc on the right, running diagonally along the upper arm. The phases are drawn as solid black shapes with clean edges and no shading, and the tattoo sits against pale skin. A woman in a coral tank top holds her shoulder with her other hand, with a plain pale background behind her.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the step, there's a loose board by the piano, always has been. Now then. The Crescent Ballroom in Sallowfield had a sprung floor and a bandleader called Teddy Pask who would only strike up when the moon was showing, so the dancers kept a tally in chalk on the cloakroom door. Six circles, one for each night from the thinnest paring of light to the round lamp that hung over the stage like a coin in a well.

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Dora Finch took the coats that winter, and a fiddler named Ivo Marchetti came in on the first thin night and asked her to dance under the moon he could hardly see. He said he would dance her through every phase until the full one, and on that night he would ask her the question he'd been practising on the ferry. She let him. Each Thursday he filled in a little more of the chalk, rubbing the circles dark with his thumb while she hung up the wet umbrellas.

On the night the disc was full, the floor was packed to the doors and the band waited for a fiddle that never came. Dora stood by the cloakroom counting the tickets in her hand. Then she went to the door and looked at the chalk. Beside the last circle, in the smallest hand she had ever seen him write, he had drawn a shut door and a small arrow pointing down the stairs to the river.

She took her coat and went down the stairs. The moon was round and white on the water, and she could see the ferry's lamp coming in slow across it. Mind the step on the way out, love. It's always been loose.

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